by Pasha Malla
Fug, Deb! Are you crying now? What are you crying about?
I’m not crying! She paused. Adine? Please take off those glasses.
Adine laughed, turned up the TV. Isa Lanyess was interviewing Loopy about her missing statue: You must be destroyed, said Lanyess, which Loopy confirmed: Destroyed.
Adine? Please, come on. Take them off. It’s enough.
Enough what? Enough me doing my job? I don’t ask you to quit . . . helping.
I miss you.
Right. You pop by to drop off a dead animal, then head right back out, now I won’t see you till tomorrow morning. Seems like your heart’s just bleeding to spend time together. Adine felt the current of her words hurtling her forward, she’d no idea what she might say next. Here it was, coldly: Are you sure you need me at all?
A jangle of keys, the deadbolt clopped open. As always, Debbie had locked them in.
That’s it? You’re leaving?
I have to go, Adine. People are waiting for me. I didn’t even have time to make anything, I’m showing up to this potluck without any food —
Stick your new pet in the oven for fifteen minutes, howbout?
The door opened. Into the apartment seeped the faintly fecal odour of some other tenant’s cookery. Adine, sensing Debbie hovering in the doorway, told her, You know what you do? You look for holes in people and you just burrow your way in to fill them up, you’re this little helpful worm. You need to start finding home in yourself, you need — Adine was interrupted by a great commotion coming from the TV. Loopy was livid: Of course I’ll always have the idea, but you can’t show people your ideas! It’s the thing that matters! And no one ever got to see the thing!
You hearing this? Adine said. Unbelievable. Eh? Deb?
The apartment felt emptied — or, more, the apartment emptied itself into Adine.
Fine! she called. Leave me. I don’t care!
Somewhere down the hallway, in another unit, someone sneezed. Adine was left with Isa Lanyess and Loopy, beseeching viewers to share with them, for one full minute, a ceremonious moment of hope and silence.
IS HE WALKING all the way across?
What? said Starx.
I can’t see him anymore. Can you? He went out on the bridge and now he’s just — gone.
Bailie, I don’t know, maybe he’s expressing himself over the side.
Peeing? You think?
No. No I don’t think.
Then? What’s he doing out there?
You’re so curious, go see.
They’d parked again by the onramp to Guardian Bridge. Above the Citywagon the bridge opened up: the crosshatch of beams and girders, all that black-painted steel, the setting sun carved through it in coppery spears. The bridge looked unfinished, a skeleton yet to be draped with skin.
No, I’m okay, said Olpert. I’ll wait here.
Me too, said Starx.
It was that time of day when the light seemed to slow and loosen before it collapsed into evening. Olpert always found this hour melancholy, maybe even nostalgic: before dusk, before nightfall, for a few careful moments the day took stock of what it had been.
He turned to Starx: What’s your favourite season?
Why, thanks for asking, Bailie! Starx faced him from the driver’s seat, the great bulk of him heaped there, head scraping the ceiling, arms wrapped around the steering column for lack of anywhere else to fit them. He seemed to be considering, his breath came in whistles and gasps. Finally he spoke: I think probably winter.
Winter. Why?
Oh, I don’t know. Probably because I’m packing such a massive heater — Starx nodded toward his lap — and the cold makes it easier to heave this monster around.
I like fall.
I’m kidding, right? Bailie? That was a joke?
I like fall because it feels like the end of the day, all the time.
You like the end of the day? Why?
Why? Olpert searched his thoughts: he was sure, as the sun painted everything golden, that he felt in these cautious, delicate moments most at home in the world. He tried to explain this to Starx, but when the words came out they sounded inadequate, even false, and when Olpert looked out again over the Narrows the light seemed cold and harsh.
I’m a nighttime fella myself, said Starx. And the reason why is that’s when I’m at my awesomest. But you? I can see it — the fall, twilight. They’re like in-between. You’re an in-between kinda guy.
Olpert pointed up the bridge: He’s coming.
Back down toward the Citywagon Raven was moving swiftly, twirling his whip at his side, a self-satisfied smirk plastered across his face.
What I’m saying, Bailie — Starx started the car — is that you’ve gotta start living. This in-between shet? It’s just waiting to die, man.
But you like the winter, Olpert said quietly. Doesn’t that mean you’re already dead?
Starx shifted into reverse. Shut your yap, Raven’s here, he said.
Gentlemen! cried the illustrationist, sliding into the backseat. One final question, Mr. Bailie, a most simple question. May I ask what it is you want?
I . . . want?
Yes! What you most desire, Mr. Bailie — what is it?
Um. What do you mean?
In life, in love!
In love?
Mr. Bailie, would it be presumptuous to suggest that you are a man without desires? And, Mr. Starx, what about you? What about anyone here, in your nice-looking city?
Starx drummed the steering wheel. What do I want? Quite a question. I mean —
Nevermind! Raven was gleeful, bouncing around in the backseat. You and your fellow citizens are in for a visionary performance! Such a people of longing! Now, let’s go.
Sure, said Starx, backing the car onto Topside Drive.
Mr. Bailie, please, activate your radio device. There are certain preparatory measures that I require. And then, my friends, all will be revealed.
What’s that then? You wanna give us a little sneak preview?
Ah, Mr. Starx, you impatient rogue! I’ll tell you only this: the people of this city strike me as wanting to wall up infinity. And you’re afraid to look on the other side of that wall.
Gotcha, said Starx.
Olpert checked the rearview: Raven was swivelled in the backseat, watching Guardian Bridge recede from view. So you’re going to show us, said Olpert, what?
Raven turned, caught Olpert’s eyes in the mirror, and held them. Why, he said, what you have always known to be true, Mr. Bailie. Only the truth. And nothing more.
WITH THE TV chattering Adine tried her brother again — no response. She flicked channels, ended up back at In the Know. In her telejournalist’s cadence, that exaggerated lilt only spoken on TV, Lanyess was amping the night’s festivities. With We-TV eyes on every corner of the island, she cooed, Cinecity is going to be the place to be. And don’t forget Saturday night’s premiere of All in Together Now — the movie made by you, for us.
These vocal undulations faded into sinewaves, a boring music that had little to do with words. Adine’s thoughts drifted to Debbie: she imagined her now arriving at some dim brown apartment that smelled perennially of stew. Around the dining table would be a bunch of sloppy moccasin’d creatives who subjected each new arrival to hugs, one of them would stroke Debbie’s hair. The food: waterlogged salads and congealed sludgy putties flavoured with great ladles of cumin. And for flouting the rigour of cookbooks these ungodly repasts entitled Debbie’s friends to an unearned, manic pride.
Oh, and the eye contact — incessant and creepy, and palpable behind every unblinking stare was a brain instructing: eye contact, eye contact. Like having dinner with a roomful of those portraits that seemed always to be watching you. Everyone was doing great, each self-celebratory anecdote was met with weirdly vicarious joy. Or, in the rare case of a
grievance, a spectacular show of empathy — chests were clutched as though stabbed, then came the hand-pats and aphorisms: Well you’re safe now — You’re good though you know that right? — You are special, you are loved.
These people confused bohemianism for authenticity, homeliness for inner beauty, prolonged, distraught embraces for a communion of souls. And this blind faith in one another stitched their collective mediocrity into a tapestry of the somehow unique, the debatably valuable, the dubiously good. It all spoke to a shared hunger to believe they were loved, they were good, they were surrounded by good. And so when Debbie came home from these dinners Adine had to read the sated look in her eyes as a false light.
Though it was this hunger that Adine had first found attractive, and then fallen in love with. Debbie kissed with a passion approaching fury. In the middle of the night if Adine, overcome with some licentious urge, nudged her out of sleep, she was ready, right away, as though she’d been awake the whole time waiting for it. Her life seemed spent anticipating intimacy — at any chance to be loved, her whole soul sparked and blazed.
Sometimes this was nice. Sometimes it was what Adine wanted too, what she needed even. But quickly Adine learned that Debbie was like this with everyone, and their intimacy started to feel cheap. Just once, she wanted Debbie to say, Not now. Or: Ew your breath is gross. It never mattered if Adine’s breath was gross or she had a little shred of food in her teeth or if Debbie was in the middle of something — a shower, making dinner, work. She returned Adine’s kisses without hesitation, stopped only when Adine pulled away, and even then in her face burned a pleading look, craving more.
She never seemed to feel the frustration or invasion that Adine felt, sometimes, when Debbie snatched her hand or worked a knee between her thighs and Adine’s mind was doing its own thing — contentedly, necessarily alone. Depending on her mood Adine would either ease away or bark, Not now. Rejected, Debbie would wilt a bit and Adine’s frustration would dwindle into guilt, and back to anger for being made to feel guilty, so she’d kiss Debbie with quiet resentment sizzling through her body, and the kiss would feel empty — yet Debbie would still be going for it, all ardour and tongue.
There was something sad about Debbie’s hunger, something desperate and grasping and tragically lonely, lonelier even than being alone. What if she were alone? Without Adine, what would she do? Throw herself into the arms of anyone? Those slipshod hysterical people at her potluck — they’d be there for her, always — and come away smelling of unessential oils? Fine, thought Adine. If that was what she’d rather, a great unwashed orgy of moaning ravenous kisses, a stewy kind of love, then she could have it.
Here was Jeremiah, the judder of him hopping up onto the couch. Adine reached across the cushions to pet her cat, though she couldn’t find him, sensed maybe he was avoiding her hand. On TV some Institute kids were arguing about which bars poured the best cider — though of course their city comprised only the southeast corner of the island, plus maybe the Dredge, one daring young man suggested a spot in Bebrog and was mocked. Adine sprawled onto her stomach, called, Jer? grasped, snapped, clicked her tongue. From somewhere came a faint mewling. But her fingers swept empty air.
THE ARMOIRE WAS six feet tall, baroque and quadrupedal, its legs curled into calligraphic hooves, fronted with a pair of doors whose mirrors had long fallen off. Sam set to cleaning it out — a pair of dusty shoes, the bar from which four coathangers hung, a stray sock, he put everything in a shoebox. On the armoire’s floor he laid an inch of yellow newsprint and a blanket, with a pillow at one end this made a decent bed. Next he drilled a hole in the top and dangled a bare bulb inside, ran it through an eyehook in the ceiling to an outlet by his bed. The light would just stay on, he figured, until bedtime. This is what they did in prison, yet this wasn’t a prison. More a guestroom.
Next he sawed a rectangular hole at chest height in the door, laid runners so a drawer could be inserted to pass his guest essentials and messages. When this was accomplished Sam felt quite pleased with himself, how easily the drawer slid in and out, with a compartment for food and drinks. Above it he drilled a peephole, and looking in he felt proud, it really was like a little bedroom.
Collecting his tools he secured the outside, hammering two-by-fours over the doors, wrapping the whole thing in heavy chains, then produced the combination lock the boy had magically reopened, slid it in place, pinched it shut, and twisted the dial. Sam tried the doors. Solid. No escape. Yet the boy’s words echoed: He always gets free . . .
The last stage was making the image. Sam got out the unused drawing pad and pencils that Adine had given him many, many birthdays ago — You were such a good artist as a kid, she’d said, you should do stuff. Finally he had something worthwhile to draw, though this picture needed to look as close as possible to the real thing, so Sam was careful and precise — the shadows, the woodgrain, the doorhandles’ coppery gleam . . .
And then it was done. Sam folded the image into the breastpocket of the khaki shirt which he’d found in the shower, and which lay, ready and waiting, upon his neatly made bed.
CALUM STOOD APART from the crowd, first in line in the yellow bevelled waiting area, hood up, his monstrous face concealed. From below came the knock of horsehooves on the cobblestones of Knock Street, Calum pictured a happy couple cuddled up in the carriage and hawked, watched his spit go arcing up and disappear between the tracks — maybe it hit them, maybe not.
From his pole position Calum was first to witness the white dot of the train approaching from UOT, the golden glowing strip above it that indicated the line (Yellow) — a cyclops with a caution-tape eyebrow swimming out of the dusk.
The gate opened, the moving sidewalk swept into motion, Calum stepped onto it as the train’s hull formed around its headlight. A hiss of brakes, a blast of air, the train slowed to match the movator’s speed as it eased into the station. The doors slid open with a singsong chime and people began to climb aboard from the moving sidewalk, everything synchronized and obedient.
No one debarked, everyone was heading to People Park. Calum found a spot inside the doors and the crowd oozed in behind him, bodies melted into one another, the air zinged with shared exuberance and joviality, there was nowhere to hide from it. Though the car was packed still more people piled into it, wedged into non-existent spaces. Calum, sandwiched between a man and a woman, cringed at the heat and tingle of strangers’ bodies. Nearby two old ladies in matching Islandwear jackets had taken the Special Needs seats. Oh it’s so nice to see all these people supporting their city, said one, and the other cawed, It sure is, it sure is.
The train hadn’t yet exited the station, the doors hung open, though the platform was empty and the movator had stopped running. It would be a long, slow, hot trip to Bay Junction. And though they weren’t yet moving, a man, pink-faced and grinning stupidly, reached over Calum’s shoulder to clutch the handrail, squeezing them face to face. Calum shrank inside his hood.
Beside Calum was the ICTS map: all that city between Blackacres and People Park, a long way to ride with this guy in his grill. Squirming, trying to eke out a little space for himself, Calum thought he heard a woman saying something about him, about his hood being up: Not supposed to have hoodies on here, he thought he heard, but wasn’t certain, everyone was talking, the air was a muddle of words. And then that gay little chime sounded and the robotic warning said to please stand back, the doors were closing, and the pink man announced, We’re off! and everyone in the car but Calum cheered.
As the train picked up speed the pink man pressed even closer, his nose almost touched Calum’s. A rubbery pink neck disappeared into a white shirt, collar yellowing, stained a deeper yellow in splotches at his armpits, a few stout black hairs investigated the outer world from his nostrils, the maroon crescent of a razor’s nick scabbed his chin, his odour was sickly and moist as rotten fruit.
Then he spoke: You excited?
Calum’
s stomach lurched.
But it was the woman behind Calum who replied, You bet, speaking to the pink man not just over but through Calum, as if he weren’t even there.
My wife and kids have been in the park all day, said the pink man, saving a seat for me, and the woman said, My boyfriend too, and someone else said, Lucky you guys, and people laughed and the laughter all around him made Calum feel hateful and small.
The train rocked along the elevated lines above Lakeside, to the south the smoke-coloured lake caught the setting sun in purple and pink streaks. Next stop, Budai Beach, announced the train. Budai Beach Station, next stop. And there was another cheer — from which a Ra-ven chant evolved, first a few voices and then the whole car in chorus, feet stomped and hands clapped. Calum’s head throbbed, he looked down, the pink man’s galoshes were toe to toe with his floppy sneakers, his breath drifted outward in a sweet-sour wash.
Amid all that joy Calum imagined the pink man saying something like, Young man, you’re not joining us? You aren’t excited for the big show tonight? And when Calum said nothing the pink man would say, Here’s a young man who’s not excited for the big show tonight, and at this the whole car would boo — and Calum would sweep off the hood, show them his ruined face, his monster’s face, and smash the pink man’s head through the window.
A fantasy. Instead the chanting eased as the train slowed into Budai Beach Station, and Calum hid inside his hood.
There was no more room, the stranded commuters swept past on the movator, faces dumbfounded, while the train slunk through the station. Next train, see you at the park, cried the pink man, and everyone laughed. At this a scream rose up in Calum — he swatted the pink man’s hand from the handrail. An air leak of a voice said, Hey, and another said, Come on, kid, you can’t just hit people. Meanwhile the pink man was puffing himself up, trembling. Animals, he muttered, animals. . . .